How Aurora Solar uses AI to design and quote solar panel prices in under a minute

Solar installation is a lengthy process. In most cases, solar installers travel to customers’ homes or buildings, measure their roofs, go back to their offices, and design optimal solar panels for them—and that’s before any panels are even installed.

Aurora Solar, a solar panel design software company, offers an alternative that CEO Chris Hopper told Tech Brew is much faster. The software, which processes publicly available and private data sets using AI, creates models of homes and buildings and then designs customized solar panels for them.

That data includes local weather info and utility rates, aerial and satellite imagery, and lidar data, or data pulled from lasers mounted on planes that scan the height of buildings.

Aurora AI’s software then “creates a 3D model of your home that takes 15 seconds or so. A lot of the work the designer would otherwise have to do just happens automatically,” Hopper said. “The second step [is] the software can automatically design a system for you.”

The software also calculates how much energy its designed system will be able to generate and how much the system will cost. And according to Hopper, Aurora’s designs are more exact than those made by people.

“It’s actually more accurate, because we can combine [and] bring in all these data sources and remove a lot of the error that also happens from manual measurement,” Hopper said.

At a time when solar power systems are going to get more expensive after Trump’s budget bill phases out clean tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act, Hopper said that speeding up parts of the installation process can save customers (and installers) money.

“If we can get more efficient in getting this on your roof, then we can bring down the cost of residential solar,” Hopper said, “and mitigate some of the impact of the tax credit going away.”